ralentina reviewed The Sellout by Paul Beatty
Too funny and too clever to enjoy
3 stars
The sellout is very funny and very clever. Too much so: the ratio of jokes and references per page was so high, I had to come to terms with missing about 60% of them. Sure enough, not being a native speaker and having never lived in the US did not help. Not all was lost: the jokes I did get were funny indeed, sometimes even laugh-out-loud funny. Still, I enjoyed the most the parts were the writing got plainer, and I could sink into the plot, and the book's power satire of racism, its victims, its deniers, and its critics. Overall, I'm happy to have read the book, but happier that I've now finished it and can move on.